TOPIC: Market Research

Here's a question for ya. How did you go about researching to see if your business ideas were viable? Is there a definitive, most effective, most respected way of doing this? What might my options be? (PS, sorry for always being the one asking the question and never the one answering, but I'm still just learining).

I went through the demographic studies available to me abut nine months ago. We here in the states have access to the census data via our PCs. I'm not sure if you have something similar or not across the pond but the studies I've found confirmed what I'd already guessed at, that the population of my county (and thus my market as I'm the only theater in the county) are skewed towards older farmers. This has impacted my movie selection as well as my ticket and concessions prices. Hopefully you can find something for yourvicinity. I find the market data invaluable.